


you and only you

by zanykingmentality



Category: To All the Boys I've Loved Before Series - Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Crushes, F/M, Love Confessions, Love Letters, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 22:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15873345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanykingmentality/pseuds/zanykingmentality
Summary: Lara Jean Song-Covey falls in love a little too easily for her liking. After all that, maybe she can trust.or: five times Lara Jean hid her feelings and one time she said them out loud.





	you and only you

**Author's Note:**

> yes i'm back with another fic about lara jean covey, who i love. i may even be inspired to read the book. 
> 
> anyway, this is unbetaed as usual, but definitely spell-checked, so please forgive any lingering errors~ enjoy!

**i.**

 

John Ambrose is a sweetheart. He sits with her at MUN conferences, during briefings and meetings. Sometimes they give each other advice. It’s cute and sweet, in that young puppy-love sort of way. It’s the kind of love that makes Lara Jean blush thinking about it, and Gen just laughs at her every time. 

 

He has sweet blue eyes and a sweet smile, and that’s the only way she can describe it, looking back on it. 

 

Well, she hardly  _ really _ knows him. Just knows that he’s cute, and she likes cute. He also passes her chocolate-chip granola bars when she looks especially tired, and she has all the wrappers saved in a bag under her bed. 

 

(Eventually she throws it out, because Margot makes her.) 

 

John Ambrose’s letter tells him how much she appreciates the snacks. How she loves his help during conferences. How they’re long, but he makes them more bearable. How, even though she’s only in fifth grade, she wants to do  _ scandalous _ things like hold hands on the swingset and watch movies alone together. She pours all these feelings into the letter. 

 

Then she finds that old blue box her mother gave her before she died, and stows the letter there. Away from prying eyes. Hidden, like her feelings. 

 

**ii.**

 

Her crush on Peter Kavinsky is pretty unwarranted, all things considered. 

 

Everyone and their mom knows that Peter Kavinsky and Gen have had a  _ thing _ for each other since, like,  _ forever. _ Lara Jean knows that better than anyone. She’s the one who’s stayed up at night on the phone with Gen, listening to her gripe about the slope of Peter Kavinsky’s jawline, the curls of his hair. His smile, his voice,  _ him. _ She’s kind of sick of it, but one day at school she looks at Peter and realizes she knows exactly what Gen is talking about. 

 

She runs home that day in a panic. This can  _ not _ be happening, she can  _ not _ be getting feelings for the boy her  _ best friend _ likes. 

 

Putting pen to paper, she  _ starts _ writing a letter. But writing a letter makes it real, so she crumples up her stationary and leaves for a party. What she never expected was the bottle to spin and point to the exact person she  _ dreaded _ facing just earlier that day. Feebly, she tries to protest. “I can… spin again…” 

 

But Peter cheekily protests, and that becomes the day Lara Jean solidifies her feelings for him and simultaneously loses her best friend. 

 

The kiss, the  _ crush _ , makes her feel so guilty she writes a letter to force it all out, and stows it away in a box, right on top of John Ambrose’s. 

 

**iii.**

 

Logically speaking ― though Lara Jean’s emotions have never been friends with logic ― she should not have as big a crush on Kenny as she does. They went on one canoe ride, and he looked at her with half-dead eyes, and Lara Jean was smitten. She spends the rest of camp thinking about what it would be like to run her hands through his curls and make him come alive. 

 

This is the shortest lasting crush, because camp only lasts a few weeks. So when she gets home she writes him a letter, and forgets all about the feelings. 

 

His letter isn’t especially long, either. After a while, Lara Jean decides his main selling point was his face. 

 

**iv.**

 

Being around Lucas is  _ easy. _ He becomes Lara Jean’s main party friend, in part because Chris refuses to attend more than one school function a year. Well, that, and the fact that he’s just really awesome to hang out with. Ninth grade is a little awkward, but pretty soon Lucas grows into Lara Jean sort of in the way that a best friend should, and she does the same. 

 

(She asks his opinion about Josh one day. Lucas looks at her and says, “Girl, you could do  _ so _ much better.”

 

She doesn’t realize she’d meant it romantically until over a year later.) 

 

But she grows out of the crush faster than she grows out of her shoes ― which is to say, really quickly. They get too close, too platonic, for Lara Jean to keep wanting to kiss Lucas. 

 

**v.**

 

Josh is where things get complicated. 

 

Granted, he’s the last letter she writes. But he’s also the most difficult one to write. She  _ knows _ Josh, has known him for most of her  _ life. _ She knows Josh inside-out, knows he’s a little  _ too _ impressionable, knows the look on his face that means he’s been shaken to his core. She’s even memorized parts of his house, like the step that always creaks and the way his room has a system. 

 

The paper is not nearly big enough to write all these things down. 

 

She feels, somehow, that writing the letter, letting her feelings be  _ real _ ― that it’s the biggest crime of all against Margot. But the only way she knows how to let these feelings go is like  _ this. _

 

_ I’m sorry, Margot. _

 

The dates they make her tag along to just make it more agonizing. She watches Margot and Josh’s clasped hands and feels sorry for herself, and angry that she’d never realized how she felt before. After two years she’s still a little in love with him, but she would never  _ dream _ of taking away the boy that Margot loves. 

 

(Even if her sister finds him expendable.) 

 

So, Lara Jean concludes, that should be the end of the letters. She’s tired of crushes. She’s more than content to read about them, to feel second-hand the all-consuming raw  _ emotion _ that comes with love and romance and dating. She’s too scared to ever go for that kind of thing, anyway.

 

**\+ i.**

 

If there was one thing Lara Jean never expected, it was to fall in love with Peter Kavinsky.  _ Again. _

 

This time, there’s no way her crush is unwarranted. He’s sweet and nice and everything she really wants in a boyfriend, fake or not. And though part of her wishes the letters were never sent, a bigger part of her is satisfied with the way things have turned out, a serendipitous chain of events that led her to this, standing in a field, heart on her sleeve. Yeah, she’s scared. 

 

“I drove here,” Lara Jean says. Peter squints at her, the afternoon sun in his eyes. He’s beautiful, she thinks. 

 

“Really?” He sounds genuinely surprised, and impressed. “Wow. Good job.” 

 

Lara Jean nods. “Thanks,” she says, and she turns around to leave. This was a bad idea, what if he doesn’t want anything to do with her after everything that’s happened ― 

 

“Whoa, whoa, wait.” Peter comes closer. “What’s that?” He makes to grab at the piece of paper clutched in Lara Jean’s fist. She tries to keep it away, but in the end it doesn’t change the fact that she wants him to see. So he reads it. “I think you should give this to me,” he says. 

 

“Can you… turn around?” 

 

He does. 

 

“Dear Peter Kavinsky.” She takes a deep breath. “I like you―” Then it feels awkward that he’s not looking at her, so she taps his shoulder. Almost immediately she thinks it was a mistake, but she’s come too far to back down now. “I like you, in the most real way. And… I guess that’s all I came here to say.” 

 

It’s kind of pathetic that it rhymes like that, like a second-grader’s poetry, or  _ worse _ , like an unsent love letter written by a seventh grader, so Lara Jean turns around to leave. 

 

“Whoa, wait,” Peter says again. “Don’t I get to respond to that?” 

 

Lara Jean is quiet. 

 

“The reason I went to Gen’s room that night was to tell her… it’s over. Because I  _ love _ you, Lara Jean. You, and only you.” Her heart stutters; there is no way this is happening. 

 

Then his lips are on hers and she’s  _ wanted _ this for so long,  _ too _ long, restless nights spent wondering what this would be like, what it would mean to press her heart into the curve of his mouth. And maybe she’s glad she sent the letters. Maybe it was all meant to be like this, in the end.

 

(“I can’t believe you made that rhyme,” Peter says later, when they’re sitting across each other in the diner. 

 

“Shut up,” she says back, grinning.) 

**Author's Note:**

> i love u lara jean 
> 
> also!! i need friends to talk about tatbilb fics and also just friends in general so catch me on [tumblr](http://zanykingmentality.tumblr.com/). shoot me some prompts if you want! i'm always down for writing more


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